


Parties

by rindomness



Series: The (Mis)Adventures of Sam Reese [7]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence (Gravity Falls), Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Sam Arc, Teen Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:20:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27962942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rindomness/pseuds/rindomness
Summary: Sam doesn't like the parties.Or, the first time Sam met Alcor wasn't really in college.
Relationships: Alcor the Dreambender & Sam Reese, Sam Reese & Alice Reese
Series: The (Mis)Adventures of Sam Reese [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1985777
Comments: 3
Kudos: 33





	Parties

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! I have a DnD fic coming up, but I'm having some trouble getting that one to work, so enjoy this little thing for now! I wanted to write something from the perspective of a younger Sam and this is what came to mind.  
> TW for implied verbal/emotional abuse, as usual when discussing Sam's parents.

By the time Sam was thirteen, she was honestly sick of the parties.

Her parents threw them multiple times a year, usually around important events, and she had been going to them ever since she could remember. There weren’t really other kids around, and when there were, they weren’t particularly fun to talk to, and they couldn’t exactly play much. When she was eight, she’d managed to swap out the music to something she had thought was less boring. After that, she had to rely mostly on stealing food late at night for a week. When she had been ten, she had tried to add some glitz and glam to her dress with glitter, some ribbon, and a glue gun. Her parents had just gotten 3L1-ZA to fix it. When she had been twelve, she had tried to wear sneakers instead of the dress flats her mom had given her. It hadn’t gone well.

So, Sam didn’t like the parties.

She honestly wished she could just... not go. Run off to the woods with a flashlight and a baseball bat and pretend that her life wasn’t awful. That could be dangerous, though, and not just because of the woods. It definitely wasn’t because of Janelle, the werewolf who lived on the outskirts of town, though. If anything, she’d be more willing to go to Janelle’s for a night than go to the party, though that was because Janelle had good cookies and actually knew a thing or two about basic decency.

She was getting off track.

Currently, Sam was in the big room that her parents used for parties at the house (an old manor passed down for a couple of centuries, now with technological upgrades like 3L1-ZA and the other service bots) in the dark-red dress that her parents had gotten her, trying to avoid the gazes of the adults in the room.

She could hear her mom’s laughter as she made her rounds in the room, and every time she passed, Sam would make an effort to smile, to look like she wasn’t bringing the atmosphere around her down.

She wanted to talk to SterlingSilver. She wanted to get on her computer, something she had bought from a second-hand shop which was practically falling apart but her parents couldn’t track, and talk to her one real friend. Sure, she only really knew SterlingSilver online, but they actually listened to her. That had to count for something, right?

She’d probably go sneak off to Janelle’s after school on Monday, in all fairness. Her parents didn’t know that, despite all their warnings that Janelle was somehow evil and horrid, Janelle was more of a parent to her than her actual parents were. Janelle would help her with homework, would make sure she had food to eat, would even hide her laptop if her parents started to get suspicious.

Sam really liked Janelle.

“Samantha, darling!”

Sam was snapped out of her thoughts by her mother’s voice, and she quickly plastered a smile on her face as the woman moved through the room towards her, a man in tow.

“Sweetie. I want you to meet Mr. Deller. He’s in charge of the high school you’ll be attending in the fall!”

That’s right, she was going to high school next year. 

She kept the smile on her face.

“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Deller.”

The man, older and balding some, smiled at her.

“Oh, Alice, you’ve raised such a polite young woman!”

If only he knew.

“Oh, naturally. She’s simply a dear, isn’t she?”

She kept the smile on her face, even though she wanted to explain that she really wasn’t.

She didn’t want to be.

She wanted to run around in the woods in a baggy sweatshirt and shorts, befriending the local gnomes, because they threw way better parties than her parents.

“So much more well-behaved than most children her age. How old are you, Samantha?”

“I’m thirteen, sir.”

“Oh, how delightful. Really, it’ll be a pleasure to have you at our school, Samantha.”

She smiled.

“I can’t wait, Mr. Deller.”

She really could wait. No doubt, the high school Mr. Deller ran was a private school, someplace her parents could keep a closer eye on her.

“Well, we must be going. Why don’t you try to talk to some people, Samantha?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good girl. Now, about the arts curriculum...”

Her mother and Mr. Deller continued on, her voice mingling into the others around her.

Talk to who? The only other people here were adults interested in talking about boring things like taxes and the economy.

“Hey,” someone said beside her, and she turned.

It was a guy, close to her age, in a nice suit with a bowtie. There was a sense of something not-quite-right around him, something older under the surface. More importantly, though, to Sam, was a feeling of mischief around him, in the way his mouth quirked up into a smirk and how he held himself, not quite tense and not quite relaxed.

“Hi,” Sam said, happy to have another person to talk to who wouldn’t be boring. “Who’re you?”

“You can call me Tyrone,” the guy, Tyrone, said. “What’s your name?”

“Um... Samantha, but... I prefer Sam, but don’t let my mom hear you calling me that.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“She’s... not happy with the nickname.” Her voice dropped. “She thinks it sounds too much like a boy’s name.”

Tyrone snickered. “I’ve heard of plenty of girls named Sam. What, is she from the two-thousands?”

“I know, right? She’s kind of ridiculous. And mean. But not really. I don’t know if I should really be talking about this.”

There was a shift in the atmosphere. “Why not?”

“She knows. I don’t know how but she does.”

“Do you want to talk outside?”

It should be okay to step out, if she was with another person. She didn’t really know him, though.

“You’re not going to try to kidnap me and sacrifice me to a demon or anything, right?”

“What? No. No way.”

There was something about the way he said it. The way the air around him shifted, like the air before a thunderstorm, that made Sam believe it.

“Okay. What about your parents, though?”

“My parents are too busy talking to your parents to notice either of us missing for a little bit, I think.”

“If you’re sure.”

So the pair of them sneaked out to the front lawn and sat on the steps.

“So what do you like to do?”

“I... like reading, but stuff like adventure books, which mom doesn’t like too much. But there are some TV shows I like, when I’m at Janelle’s and I get time to watch some cartoons before I need to get home.”

“Janelle?”

“She’s this werewolf who lives out by the forest. My parents say to stay away from her because she might try to eat me and she’s mean because she’s a werewolf but...like, that’s honestly silly. Do they not know how they sound when they’re saying that stuff?”

“Seriously though, are they from the two-thousands?”

“I don’t think so. They act like they are, though. What about you? What do you like?”

“Hmm... I like mysteries, but I think I’ve read so many of them that I always know who the culprit is.”

“That must suck. Mysteries are great when you don’t know who it is, but I guess... mysteries can also be fun when you do, because then you can see the steps coming up to the twist.”

“I... that makes sense, actually.”

“I sometimes like to re-read mysteries to see if, now that I know who did it, if I can figure it out going backwards. They usually explain how they did it, but... it’s still fun.”

“I’ve never really thought about it like that. Thanks, Sam.”

Sam smiled, the first real one that night. “You’re pretty cool, Tyrone.”

“No way, you’re way cooler than me. I couldn’t deal with my parents getting in the way of my life at every step.”

Sam got quiet.

“I mean... I don’t really, either. I kinda wanna run away.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Because then mom and dad would be sad, and I don’t really want to make them sad.”

“What? But they’re awful-”

“Sometimes they’re not, though. I really like it when dad will help me with hard math stuff, and mom will bake with me sometimes, and it’s fun. They’re not always like that.”

“But-”

“And if I ran away, like, yeah, I don’t like them. But it wouldn’t be fair to them, and I can’t get a job as a thirteen year old because of labor laws, so I’d probably just end up living with Janelle, and that’s not fair to her, either. She’s nice to me and she lets me stay over and helps me with homework but she doesn’t have kids because she doesn’t want them. I don’t want to intrude on that, y’know? And besides, it’s only, like, four more years. I can... I’ll survive.”

Tyrone was quiet.

“I... see.”

“And hey, maybe I’ll see you again, huh? That would be funny.” She bumped her shoulder against his. “Cheer up, yeah? I don’t wanna see you be a gloomy gloom.”

Tyrone snickered at that. “I’m not a gloomy gloom.”

“You’re acting like one.”

“Shut up.”

“Not until you admit you were acting like a gloomy gloom.”

“Alright, fine, I was being a gloomy gloom. Happy?”

“Yes.”

He started laughing, and soon, she was laughing with him.

Tyrone was cool.

It was nearly five years later when it hit her that the kid she had sat with and talked to on that boring night at a party was the same guy as the demon currently floating over the back of the couch, trying and failing to steal chips from her bag during movie night.


End file.
